Today in the Spirit: Proper 15B
The basis for the readings selected for Proper 15B (except for the NT reading from Ephesians, which continues its own course) is the forceful determination with which Jesus of Nazareth speaks into the teeth of opposition by those John the Evangelist calls the Jews. The appointed Gospel reading from John 6:53-59 gives us the last of three movements in this discourse with his frenzied objectors. In response to their suggestion he might be commending cannibalism (“How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 52), Jesus, rather than becoming conciliatory at this point, speaks harder and deeper into his claim that he himself (in his flesh) is the bread for the life of the world. He declares: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (53).
The assigned OT reading from Proverbs 9:1-6 (the only selection from Proverbs in the entire three-year lectionary) speaks into our worship the invitation of Wisdom to those who know they are simple and require sense. The explicit connection to Jesus as the bread of life in the Gospel reading is found in the words, “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Leave your simple ways, and live, and walk in the way of insight” (5-6). The assigned Psalm 147 (also assigned on Christmas 1) is a song of praise with themes similar to the Proverbs reading: Great is our Lord, and great is his power; indeed, his wisdom is infinite. The LORD lifts up the meek, and brings the ungodly to the ground (5-6, BCP New Coverdale).
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The next installment in our Year B series of readings from Ephesians takes us to Paul’s teaching in Ephesians 5:3-14. The reading begins with warnings for the church against the particular sins of sexual immorality, foolish talk, and greed (vv. 3-7), then picks up with the responsibility the church has to walk as children of light (8). As always, the Collect assigned will remind us it is only by God’s “perpetual mercy” that we walk with God at all and that we depend on him to “keep us from all things hurtful” and to “lead us to all things profitable for our salvation.”
The Collect
Keep your Church, O Lord, by your perpetual mercy; and because without you, the frailty of our nature causes us to fall, keep us from all things hurtful, and lead us to all things profitable for our salvation; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Wisdom Has Built Her House (Proverbs 9:1-6)
1 Wisdom has built her house;
Proverbs 9:1-6
she has hewn her seven pillars.
2 She has slaughtered her beasts; she has mixed her wine;
she has also set her table.
3 She has sent out her young women to call
from the highest places in the town,
4 “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!”
To him who lacks sense she says,
5 “Come, eat of my bread
and drink of the wine I have mixed.
6 Leave your simple ways, and live,
and walk in the way of insight”
Many attempts have been made to identify the meaning of the seven pillars (Are they the seven lampstands, the named churches in Revelation? Are they qualities of wisdom such as knowledge and instruction described elsewhere in Proverbs?). Do not allow speculation along these lines to cause you to overlook the most obvious point: God’s wisdom has built a stable and beautiful venue for receiving her nourishing word.
Wisdom’s house is the Church, brothers and sisters. We, with all our personal weaknesses and idiosyncrasies, are, yes, the hope of the world, built, as Paul has shown us in our NT readings from Ephesians, on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone (Eph. 2:20). Not only is the feast enjoyable but the venue can be counted on to hold up through every conceivable storm and attack, that the feasting might always continue. Such is our confidence coming to Jesus and his body, the Church filled with the Holy Spirit. Today, hear the invitation of the Holy Spirit to leave simple (read “unstable”) ways behind and walk in the way of insight found inside the house.
The LORD Builds Up Jerusalem (Psalm 147)
1 Praise the Lord!
Psalm 147:1-3, 12-14
For it is good to sing praises to our God;
for it is pleasant, and a song of praise is fitting.
2 The Lord builds up Jerusalem;
he gathers the outcasts of Israel.
3 He heals the brokenhearted
and binds up their wounds…
12 Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem!
Praise your God, O Zion!
13 For he strengthens the bars of your gates;
he blesses your children within you.
14 He makes peace in your borders;
he fills you with the finest of the wheat.
Here, too, we sing in our worship of God’s provision of food for his creatures that need it to survive; he gives to the beasts their food and to the young ravens that cry (9). And, as in the Proverbs reading, references to the people of God, Jerusalem, like a building, The Lord builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the outcasts of Israel (2); and, For he strengthens the bars of your gates; he blesses your children within you. He makes peace in your borders; he fills you with the finest of the wheat (14-15).
See how the church is for you, a stronghold in the face of enemies who would seek to destroy it. It is constructed for good defense with bars on its gates and for abundant living within the community, peace, and nourishment on the finest wheat (the word, the sacraments, the fellowship). An increasing number of confessing Christians are seeking to follow Jesus apart from the church. They see the faults of a communal form of gaining maturity in faith–the time it requires and the clash of personalities–and fail to believe the word of God giving expression, as it does here, to the power of it found nowhere else. Has this devotion caught you just at a moment when you are considering giving up on the church?
Today, in the Spirit, hear the psalmist’s words declaring Jerusalem’s blessings, and, putting aside your doubts, run to the church (a solid church) to find essentials you cannot acquire on your own.
Walk as Children of the Light (Ephesians 5:3-14)
3 But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. 4 Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. 5 For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. 6 Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. 7 Therefore do not become partners with them; 8 for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light 9 (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), 10 and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. 11 Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. 12 For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. 13 But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, 14 for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says,
“Awake, O sleeper,
Ephesians 5:3-14
and arise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”
Paul’s training as a Pharisee, which he cannot help but carry with him into his Christian life, is in the Jewish Two-Way tradition. That is, you list evil on one side and righteousness on the other. You learn them both cold—that’s important—then choose good over evil (see Psalm 1, Gal. 5:19-26). There is no room for compromise in this mode of spiritual formation, which is precisely what makes this passage so uncomfortable.
Secretly, and sometimes not so secretly, what we settle for in our walk with Christ is a middle-third way. We construct an illusory, despiritualized zone in which we can live day by day, year by year, comfortably compromised. Paul lived a compromised life, too, but we find that he was anything but comfortable with it (Rom. 7:14ff).
Today, in the Spirit, read this passage and admit humbly that you are a compromised Christian. Open the door of your heart to allow God to persuade you one step at a time toward light and away from darkness.
Whoever Feeds on My Flesh (John 6:53-59)
53 So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. 55 For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 56 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” 59 Jesus said these things in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum.
John 6:53-39
From John’s reference to the synagogue at Capernaum, at the end of this reading, we are meant to see that Jesus taught this subject repeatedly after his discussion with the Jews. The language of eating and feeding on his flesh and drinking his blood is strong imagery to reflect the level to which we as Christians are meant to consume Jesus Christ in our yielding to him in faith, surrendering body, soul, and spirit, in keeping with his surrendering himself for us on the cross. It is also certainly pre-figuring of the Holy Eucharist. As the Israelites ate the manna in the wilderness to survive, so do we depend entirely on the grace of God through Christ offered materially in the bread and wine, signifying our Lord’s body and blood at Holy Communion.
Augustine, I think, seeks to integrate Jesus’ words about his flesh and blood in this passage with Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians: For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes (1 Cor. 11:29). In “On Christian Doctrine,” Augustine writes: “[Holy Eucharist] is a figure bidding us communicate in our Lord’s passion, and secretly and profitably store up in our memories that for our sakes He was crucified and slain.” So, we nourish our “memories” (the consciousness out of which we live and move in life) physically with the Holy Communion. The body and blood proclaim to us as we consume them the death of Christ that we might become an instrument of proclamation (Paul’s you proclaim) to others.
Today, Holy Spirit, I find myself meditating on the fuller significance of Holy Communion in the church through Jesus’ words in this passage and the commentary of Paul and Augustine. Feed my “memories” and build me up in the body and blood I consume in faith.
Today in the Spirit
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